


Bedtime Story: The Shepard that Kaidan Knows, Part 2

by humblydefiant



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Akuze, M/M, Memory, mShenko, thresher maw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 07:38:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6795142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humblydefiant/pseuds/humblydefiant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More alone time. Kaidan asks Jaxson Shepard about the scars on his back, the ones he received during the failed mission on Akuze. Jaxson reluctantly shares his memory of that ill-fated mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedtime Story: The Shepard that Kaidan Knows, Part 2

Fingers moved across undiscovered territory. Shepard lay on his stomach while Kaidan traced the scars on his back. Sure, Kaidan had scrubbed these scars in the shower, had dug his nails into them in the heat of passion, but he had never just studied them.

Jaxson Shepard’s body held so many stories. Some he knew about. Others he had experienced alongside Shepard. But these scars in particular intrigued him. They were irregular in shape like a simplified Cy Twombly painting decorating Jax’s back from his right shoulder down to the top of his left buttock. One large spot in particular just under his shoulder blade dwarfed the others and looked to be as large as Kaidan’s forearm.

“Tell me about these.” 

“About Akuze?”

“Yeah.” He knew the official story of how Jaxson acquired them but had never heard it from Shepard’s mouth.

Shepard remained silent for a few minutes. The side of Jax’s face not buried in a pillow showed signs of excavating pain: the down-turned mouth, the dull glaze in his eye. Kaidan worried that he should have left it well enough alone. The last thing he wanted was to dredge up psychological scars while exploring physical ones, but he wanted to know. He needed to know.

“I’ve never told anyone about them, besides the official report and the mandatory psych sessions.” Shepard whispered.

Kaidan slid his arm under Shepard’s stomach and rolled him over. He straddled Jax’s waist and brought his face down to where their noses were nearly touching. Kaidan gazed into Jax’s warm, icy blues. “I’m not just anyone,” his voice playful yet gentle.

The edges of Shepard’s mouth perked. “Agreed.” Jax blinked and filled his chest with air. He exhaled long and slow, preparing. The memory surfaced on his face making the faded scars from his reconstruction flare up anew.

Kaidan sat back. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. “Shepard, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have -”

“Hey.” Jaxson’s attention snapped back to Kaidan. He pushed his torso up so that they were once again face to face. “What was it you said to me just the other night when you found me crying in the shower? 'You never have to be sorry for me?'”

Kaidan chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Then that goes for me, too. You never have to be sorry for me." Jaxson hooked his arm around Kaidan and spun him around to lay him flat on his back. "And remember, Shepard is what you call me out on the battlefield. In here, soldier, you call me Jaxson.”

“Or Jax. I like Jax.”

A smile slipped through the faux gruff expression Jax had been trying to maintain. “Yeah, I like that, too.” He smiled for a moment before he let his memory retreat back to Akuze. His smile dissolved. “It was luck, K. The only reason I’m alive right now is because of stupid, fucking luck. I didn’t do anything to deserve to live while the rest of my squad died. Nothing. I just went to take a piss.”

Kaidan’s breath caught in his throat - then erupted into laughter. He didn’t mean to laugh but Shepard’s admission caught him off guard. “Okay, you’ve got to explain that one.”

Jaxson chuckled and bit his lower lip. “My bladder. My tiny bladder. I have it to thank for surviving Akuze.” Jaxson tried to keep the joke going but his chuckles sputtered and died. Kaidan dampened his as well. Whatever the story, it was ultimately not a pleasant one or the fodder of some joke.

“When we arrived at Apaté, the small settlement the colonists had set up, it was a ghost town. It was just like Freedom’s Progress. There was evidence that people had been going about their daily lives - food on tables, terminals left on - but then they just weren’t there.”

“The files said something about structural damage?”

“Yeah. A lot of the living pods were messed up pretty bad. Walls torn out. A couple were turned over or crumpled.” Jax picked at some worrisome hangnail. “When we started feeling the tremors, a few of the marines suggested that there had been a powerful earthquake that destroyed the colony. But the damage was too inconsistent for that. Sure, some of the pods looked like a quake had hit but others had no damage at all. And where were the bodies?”

Kaidan leaned up to stroke Jaxson’s face. This drew out a wan smile. 

“It was the second night. We had a camp on the edge of the settlement, on the side that had taken the least damage. Guiterrez and I took first watch, swapped a flask of whisky back and forth, talking quietly, being more lax than we should have been. Then the second watch came, Guiterrez and I hit the sack -”

Kaidan raised his eyebrow in question, but Jax just continued. “The tremors continued but, at that point, we didn’t think much of it. We weren’t exactly seismologists. I woke up again in the middle of the night and I had to pee so I went to the edge of camp where there was a grove of trees - most of the settlement was just grassland, and -”

Tears welled in his eyes. Kaidan could see him fighting them back and wanted to tell him to stop. To just stop right there. Perhaps distract him with a kiss, but Kaidan let him continue.

“The tremors started stronger than before, I shook off and turned around, when the ground just erupted in the middle of the camp. This dark pillar just straight up from the ground. It wasn't until I saw it's eyes that I knew the damn thing was alive. At that time, I’d never seen a thresher maw. It was smaller than many of the ones you and I have seen since then but it still swallowed three of the tents whole, including the one I had just left.”

“Shepard, my God.” A stupid thing to say but it was all that he could manage.

“No one had much time to react. There were other threshers that were already spitting at the tents and anyone who tried to run out of them. Almost fifty people, screaming at once. I had no idea what to do so I just started sprinting back towards the camp. Operations Chief Wilson was one of the soldiers on second watch. She had seen me go into the trees. I don’t know if she was trying to get to safety or to come protect me. Anyway, she grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around and screamed ‘move, LT.’ I still hear her voice sometimes. Ashley reminded me of Wilson." Kaidan watched as Jax swallowed the bitter memories down.

“Wilson shoved me back toward the trees and then I felt this searing pain on my back.” He arched his back and flinched as if feeling the phantom injury again. “It felt like - like someone dug claws into my skin and ripped it from my bones. I fell to the ground, blinded for a moment. A crawled a few meters then - then I remembered Wilson and I looked back to see if I could help her.

“She was melting, K.” Jaxson’s lips trembled, eyes looking at Kaidan but past him into some horrid scene. Kaidan felt his own jaw go slack. His mind wanted to follow Jaxson into that memory, to reconstruct it from his words, but a part of him didn’t want to. And he had that luxury, to not have the scene burned into his skull.

“Her mouth was open in a scream but just a gurgling sound was coming out. Her arm reached out to me, as if I could help her while her flesh dripped off her bones.”

Kaidan felt transfixed. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. Only his brow worked to permanently fuse his eyebrows together.

Jaxson’s eyes sank into the bed. Everything about his body told Kaidan that Jax wanted to be buried under it, under something. “I clawed my say further into the trees and waited. I just laid there until the screaming stopped. Until the tremors stopped. Until the beta rescue team pulled me out.” When he looked up, Kaidan saw a ghost of a man before him, pale and scared. Shepard showed him parts of his life that he had long since locked away in crypts.

“All those times, Jax. All those times in the Mako, when one of those goddamned worms ambushed us. You never said anything. And Ashley, my God. You never treated her any differently then the rest of the crew even though she reminded you of someone you had lost in that nightmare you lived through.”

Jaxson shurgged. “What could I say? Besides, I didn’t want to make it anyone else’s problem. I didn't want it to be Ashley's problem.”

This spurred Kaidan to his lover’s side. He took Jaxson’s chin and pulled it up from where it burrowed in his neck. Jax’s eyes were slow to follow, wanting to remain under the cover of heavy lids. When they lifted, Kaidan nearly moaned from the sadness laden within them.

“I’m no hero, K.”

“Are you kidding me? You went through hell. You had already gone through hell even before that,” Kiadan thought back to what little Jaxson had told him about his parents being murdered on Mindoir. “And yet, here you are, now, putting everything on the line for a galaxy that has been anything but kind to you. You are one of - no - THE most compassionate person I have ever known. You amaze me every day.” Kaidan raised up on his knees, his hands flailing like a sidewalk prophet. “How anyone could go through what you have gone through and be that kind of person. To be a hero! I just don’t know.”

Having spent himself, Kaidan flopped back on his legs, wagging his head.

“You.”

“What?” Kaidan barely heard what Shepard said over the blood gushing through his ears.

Jaxson got up on his own knees and traversed the short space between them. He looked down at the hands slack at Kaidan’s side. He took each one into his own and fixed his eyes on Kaidan. All of the sadness, pain and uncertainty that Kaidan had glimpsed there so many times vanished. Certainty shown through them now.

“There are so many times that I could have lost it but I didn’t. It’s because of you. Me surviving Akuze? That was a roll of the dice. But the things that I’ve lived through since I stepped aboard the Normandy, you helped me through, even before you knew you were helping me. You’re my sanity check, remember?” Jaxson punctuated the statement by scruffing up Kaidan’s hair.

Kaidan's face softened and he through himself into hugging this beautiful man. They just rocked in silence for a moment. Kaidan chuckled at a thought before sharing it with Jaxson. "You know, if I'm your sanity check, you've got serious problems." At this, they both started laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> I may have Shepard's rank incorrect in this story. I couldn't find anything that said what their rank was at the time of Akuze. If anyone has information on this - if I got it wrong - please let me know!


End file.
